Come and watch Bartosik and Oakes in the drawing performance

Cat Fight BC

Headbones Gallery, September 01

Thanks to the Ontario Arts Council

A Cat Fight - There’s something about the spectacle of a cat fight that’s hard to resist. The appeal is in the messy way that females fight with scrappy jibes, hair pulling, eye scratchy, green-eyed fury. September 01 at Headbones Gallery, Aleks Bartosik from Toronto (feisty paintings and bold big drawings) will stand up to the Vernon she-cat Julie Oakes.  This is not the first time the two have curled their lips back and meowed, Headbones at Art Mur Gallery, Montreal, also witnessed their furious dynamics in April, 2010 as the crowd jeered and cheered.

 A Cat Fight - Making a drawing feels like that sometimes. It begins with scratching away at the paper, trying to make a dent in the overwhelming white-space of aesthetic existence. The drawing may seem to be getting somewhere, hitting that stride, grooving in a space where the sun has come out and there is nothing to do but purr. Then a snag. A rustle in the leaves perhaps. A rodent-like, bird-brain of an idea crosses the path of vision and with a stretch and flex, it’s time to rise to the occasion. Eyes narrow to slits for better focus.  A leap, a dive, and a close brush with annihilation that could erase the entire project. The claws come out. It is time to get serious, to tackle. Is it ego against id or artist against paper? And with both sides so similar, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two once those claws have appeared.